Finding good business opportunities is considered as one of the main objectives of any business intelligence effort. Doing so in the MENA open cyberspace requires the information specialist to perform an accurate search in the search engines in order to reach a workable number of results. This becomes more complicated when the information specialist’s task is to find a micro business opportunity which will fit the needs of a single entrepreneur or a small-medium company. This article demonstrates how to do it quickly and efficiently.

Let's take for example an information specialist whose task is to find a micro opportunity for a client who wishes to purchase a piece of land somewhere in Saudi Arabia. At first, the information specialist enters Google, crosses the word “land” in Arabic (أرض) with the phrase “investment opportunity” (فرصة استثمار) and orders Google to present only Saudi websites with a URL ending with “sa”. Google will give over 76,000 results, which is definitely not a workable number of results.

At the second stage, the information specialist adds the phrase “for sale” and crosses between “land for sale” (أرض للبيع) and “investment opportunity” (فرصة استثمار). Google will show over 62,000 results which is also an unworkable number. At that point, the information specialists must show creativity and think out of the box. He adds the word “rare” and crosses between the phrases “land for sale” (أرض للبيع) “rare investment opportunity” (فرصة استثمار نادرة). Google will show over 11,000 results. It’s much better than 62,000 results, but it is still an unworkable number and it is not good enough.

Now, the information specialist goes one step forward. He uses Google’s Search Tools and asks only for results from the passing week. The results of this search are amazing. The number of results shrank from more than 11,000 to less than 30. In addition, a quick glance at the results is enough to see that all URLs are from the same website – www.haraj.com.sa.  This website offers a list of many small or medium deals of land purchase in almost every city and village in Saudi Arabia and this lists is being updated and refreshed every few minutes. Here, as far as the information specialist is concerned, the mission was accomplished successfully.

Can anyone do it? Can anyone reach the same results? Theoretically, the answer is Yes, but practically the answer is No. Furthermore, in order to reach these results within less than 5 minutes, there is a need for highly qualified and experienced information specialist who knows Google’s advanced search tools, who knows Arabic very well and who can think out of the box. Hiring such a specialist will certainly save the client a lot of money and resources.